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The economics just doesn't work out, and will never work out. If you extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon, you're still bound to fossil fuel, and you have to buil

The economics just doesn't work out, and will never work out. If you extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon, you're still bound to fossil fuel, and you have to build a hydrogen infrastructure. If you do centralized electrolysis, you still need renewable energy to not be bound to fossil fuel, and you have to build a hydrogen infrastructure. If you do decentralized electrolysis, i.e. you plug in your hydrogen car to charge it, you essentially have a battery that is slower, more expensive, and shittier than existing Li-ion batteries. We have the infrastructure for electric cars already, they're more efficient than hydrogen cars, and they're cheaper to produce so why bother? It's extremely unlikely that the underlying economics and energy fundamentals will change, but if Toyota wants to dump billions into research - fine, I'm not going to stop them.

nihonde 10y ago
I'm still not convinced. At the end of the day, liquid hydrogen is a better energy store than any existing battery tech. All the issues you listed are the same for electric cars--reliance on fossil fuels, need to build infrastructure, etc. You also ignored the fact that filling a tank is more convenient and faster than charging a battery. Or that batteries have a limited lifespan. If the economics don't work, why would the leading automaker that originates from an island without domestic fossil fuels bet on it?
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  You have to do the full systems analysis, you can't just look at the numbers of liquid hydrogen in isolation. You get less mileage/kWh from a system that consumes electricity and fills up fuel cell tanks, than a system that consumes electricity and charges on-board Li-ion batteries. Filling a tank is absolutely convenient, but gasoline is safe at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. Liquid hydrogen isn't. And there's almost no hydrogen infrastructure in place. We have a lot of infrastructure for charging electric cars already, and charging stations are being built at a rapid pace to satisfy actual demand. Toyota is spending a ton of Other People's Money on an interesting research project. The government of Japan is perfectly free to subsidize that if they feel like it, and I'm sure we'll get something useful and interesting out of it at the end, but fuel-cell cars are just not going to beat electric ones.
  - nihonde 10y ago
    Interesting. I appreciate this thoughtful discussion! I live in Nagoya, Japan (near Toyota HQ) and I've yet to see a Mirai in the wild except at the dealerships.

nihonde 10y ago

I'm still not convinced. At the end of the day, liquid hydrogen is a better energy store than any existing battery tech. All the issues you listed are the same for electric cars--reliance on fossil fuels, need to build infrastructure, etc. You also ignored the fact that filling a tank is more convenient and faster than charging a battery. Or that batteries have a limited lifespan. If the economics don't work, why would the leading automaker that originates from an island without domestic fossil fuels bet on it?

henrikschroder 10y ago
You have to do the full systems analysis, you can't just look at the numbers of liquid hydrogen in isolation. You get less mileage/kWh from a system that consumes electricity and fills up fuel cell tanks, than a system that consumes electricity and charges on-board Li-ion batteries. Filling a tank is absolutely convenient, but gasoline is safe at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. Liquid hydrogen isn't. And there's almost no hydrogen infrastructure in place. We have a lot of infrastructure for charging electric cars already, and charging stations are being built at a rapid pace to satisfy actual demand. Toyota is spending a ton of Other People's Money on an interesting research project. The government of Japan is perfectly free to subsidize that if they feel like it, and I'm sure we'll get something useful and interesting out of it at the end, but fuel-cell cars are just not going to beat electric ones.
- nihonde 10y ago
  Interesting. I appreciate this thoughtful discussion! I live in Nagoya, Japan (near Toyota HQ) and I've yet to see a Mirai in the wild except at the dealerships.